1. I knocked on the door when the lady came I gave her a warm smile.

2. Why should I apologize when he insulted me he did not apologize.

3. Once, Muscatine was a tiny settlement with only a few people, today, it is a busy city of 27,000 people.

4. Why do you ask, what concern is it of yours?

See the problems created by the sentences above? We are actually running two sentences together in each case. When we hook two sentences together with a comma instead of separating them with a terminal punctuation mark (period, question mark, semicolon, exclamation point), we are creating a comma splice. Sentences three and four are examples of comma splices. They could be repaired this way:

• Once, Muscatine was a tiny settlement with only a few people. Today, it is a busy city of 27,000 people.
• Why do you ask? What concern is it of yours?

The comma is not a strong enough mark to separate independent clauses (sentences). It signals a short pause only. We need a definite end marker when we complete a sentence, or, we need to use something extra, such as a conjunction, to hook the two sentences together. We could write:

• Once, Muscatine was a tiny settlement with only a few people, but today it is a busy city of 27,000 people.

Since sentence four is composed of two separate questions, there is no other way of writing it correctly. We need the two question marks. In examples one and two, we are not committing the fault of using a comma splice. We are simply omitting punctuation altogether. When we do that, the result is called a fused, run-on, or run-together sentence. But whatever you call it, the problem is the same. We have taken two sentences that should stand alone and have crammed them together into one faulty sentence. Again, we need terminal punctuation markers to signal the end of one complete thought (sentence) and the beginning of another.

• I knocked on the door. When the lady came, I gave her a warm smile.
• Why should I apologize? When he insulted me, he did not apologize.

Remember that writing is visual. When we talk, we signal completion of thoughts (sentences) by voice pause and inflection (raising, lowering, or otherwise manipulating our voices). In writing, though, our readers can't hear our inflections or pauses. Our readers have to see them.

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